What do You Know about Uno [2]?

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At the forefront of gastronomic as well as transport news and current affairs, fbb spotted this sign at a local Island shop:-

Rushing down to the secluded fishing harbour in Ryde, jumping into his trusty traditional coracle, your investigative and fearless reporter was able to photograph the arrival of the first fish cake catch of the season.

Absolutely delicious and so much tastier than frozen!

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As a teenager at Northampton Grammar School, and recognising the opening of York, Sussex, Essex etc. hallowed halls of academe, pre-fbb and his chums used to joke at Uni application time, "Hang on a year or two and you'll be able to go to Northampton University." Chortle chortle.

A University in Northampton?

In 1924, Northampton Technical College was created from the technical school based in premises in Abington Square (see P.S. below). A new building for the college on St George's Avenue was formally opened by the then Duke and Duchess of York in 1932.

A School of Art opened later in 1937. A teacher-training college in Liverpool lost its home and was transferred to what is now the Park Campus of the University of Northampton. The college was opened by the then Secretary of State for Education and Science, Margaret Thatcher, in 1972.

In 1975, this teacher-training college amalgamated with the college of technology and art to become Nene College of Higher Education, taking its name from Northampton's river.

In 1993, the college incorporated St. Andrew's School of Occupational Therapy and was granted "taught degree" awarding powers. In 1994 it took in the Leathersellers College and in 1997 the Sir Gordon Roberts College of Nursing and Midwifery. It became University College Northampton in 1999 and gained full university status as The University of Northampton in 2005.

In order to gain university status it had to convince the Privy Council that a Royal Decree, signed by King Henry III in 1265 following the Battle of Lewes, should be repealed. This decree banned the establishment of a university in Northampton.

Until the end of August this year a network of bus services, linking the Campus near Boughton (Park Campus) with the Avenue (former College of Technology, St Georges Avenue, bottom of map) site with  the town centre, have been operated by much respected Olney coach operator Souls.

For the record, the map also shows Stagecoach town service 7 (in yellow) and First town service 4 (in green); both providing links with Park Campus.

A variety of Soul's vehicles has been used in recent years including buses branded specifically for the University services ...

... with the gold livery giving way to white.

Two monstrosities have been seen on the streets. Souls six-wheeler "biggie" had popped into the town occasionally ...

... and a recent variant this been this horror in all-over contravision spotty stuff.

Northampton correspondent Alan, who took the pic, opines that the livery is either to prevent the students seeing what a dump the centre of Northampton has become or, alternatively, keeping a bus load of dreaded students out of the view of staid and traditional Northamptonians!

But from 1st September all this is washed away and replaced by Unobus, the arms length company of the university of Hertfordshire. See "What do you now about Uno? [Part 1]" (read again).

From  publicity point of view all has not been ideal with the changeover, as we shall reveal tomorrow.

P.S. The former college on Abington Square is long gone, replaced by shops and the ABC Cinema, itself now used as a "happy clappy" evangelical Church. The "Bantam Cock" pub, as frequented by fbb's dad after finishing work at Francis Nicholls' fruit and veg warehouse on a Saturday lunchtime, is still there.

It was renamed "The Monkey's Head", fbb  has no idea why, then closed. In 2011 it reopened as "The Bantam" and awaits an updating visit by the Streetview noddy car.

 Next Bus Blog : Thursday 6th September 

What do You Know about Uno [1]?

A card game?

fbb's family gave him a pack a couple pf Christmasses ago. It is a simple but infuriating game whereby chosen cards instruct the player to collect or discard from their hand; clearly understood by fbb's grandchildren but still something of a mystery to the "old man"!

Or it's a bus company.

Uno, whose legal title is Universitybus Limited, was set up as an 'arms length' company by the University of Hertfordshire in 1992. It has its own Board of Directors and is expected to run on a fully commercial basis. In the early days, it was a thorn in the flesh of one of the Fearnley-led "Sovereign" Companies, the former London Country North East.

In 2005 it was re-branded "Uno" to distance the company from being a purely "student" service ...

... and the buses were painted in pink and purple, a departure from the previous grey, black and white colour scheme.

Shortly after buying the St Albans operations of Centrebus (Holdings), UNO helped to found a voluntary partnership of local authorities, the university and the bus and rail operators serving St Albans with the aim of co-ordinating and improving public transport across the City. Local buses have been rebranded as "Pink". Recent devlopments have seen a small fleet of "hybrid" buses taking on the City's local routes.

Tendered and commercial routes now run throughout Hertfordshire in addition to the prime provision of student transport to and between Campuses.

From the little Potters Bar town service ...

... to longer distance routes penetrating well into the London buses area, (as here at Queensbury on the London Underground Jubilee line) ...

...  Uno is now the second largest bus operator in Hertfordshire. You even go to Stansted Airport, you know!

Up to now, however, most routes have been operated in and from bases within Hertfordshire

From last weekend (Sunday 1st September) Uno began operating in Northampton, serving the two University Campuses.

Did Uno that Northampton had a University? More tomorrow!

Fat Bus Bloke's Bible Blog has a look at The Big Bang Theory today (read here).

 Next Bus Blog : Wednesday 5th September 

I'll Give you Merry Hell!

Whoops, typing error : that heading should be "Merry Hill"

On the Waterfront Part 2

See also "On the Waterfront Part 1 (read again)

The late Don Richardson (left) and twin brother Roy 

It was Merry Hill that made the Richardson name famous.

Steelworks seen here North of the name "Brierley Hill"

The Round Oak Steel Works ...

... just a couple of miles from the house where the twins grew up, had employed 10,000 in its heyday, and when it closed in 1982 the area went into a state of shock.
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But where others despaired, the Richardsons saw an opportunity. They snapped up the site and claimed that their scheme for one of the country's first giant out-of-town shopping malls and accompanying office complex would eventually employ more than the steel works. They were right. It was a high roll of the dice but when the 1.85m sq ft mall was complete they sold it for a reputed £150m to Mountleigh in 1990. It is now a Westfield centre.

 

The twins had their first taste of business when they left school at the age of 14 and joined their father, who was selling second-hand trucks, a business he had built up in the aftermath of the First World War when heavy transport was in short supply. The twins came into their own when a similar shortage followed the Second World War.

  "There was a shortage of trucks at the end of the war," Don says, "and the market kept growing each year, so we got into selling new ones." Don and Roy made a trip down South one day, planning to put in an order for 50 Bedford trucks.

"We went down to buy 50," Roy says, "and came out with 980." They forward-bought the rest of the year's production, forcing all dealers to come to them. The boys done good!

To serve the complex, "the boys" started Merry Mill Minibuses ...

... seen here in Dudley bus station. In 1997 he business was eventually bought by National Express and branded as Travel Merry Hill. Later it was to be disbanded and the services incorporated into the main West Midlands network.

But the most spectacular feature, from a transport point of view (and the least successful) was the monorail.

It cost £22 million to build, the construction work taking place along with the final phase of the shopping complex in 1988/89, but due to health and safety concerns it did not open until 19 months after the centre was complete. There were to be five stations, with the system extending over the canal and terminating at the Waterfront, ironically not far from the former Round Oak railway station.

Round Oak Station (closed 1962) just across the road from

John Parry's proposed Waterfront terminus

See yesterday's blog
"On the Waterfront Part 1" (read again).

There were even plans to link up with an expanded Midlands Metro tram network. The monorail was officially opened on 1 June 1991. But the actual opening to the public was delayed by Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate investigating evacuation procedures. After operating for a short while, the monorail was temporarily closed again in 1992, but ran sporadically until 1996.

After the system was put up for sale in 1996, the trains and track were transferred in 2001 to the Oasis Shopping Centre, in Broadbeach, Queensland, Australia ...

... to enable expansion of its own monorail system. The bits were never used and the line was never extended!

Ironically, not far from the rotting remains of the Richardsons' Central Station ...

... standing as a reminder of failure ...

the Central Station in its final form:

a monument to failure?

... is another piece of transport history, once closed and rotting but now reopened and in use.

This is the magnificent Delph Locks ladder, restored and available for pleasure craft. So a whole history of transport is revealed at Merry Hill. The essential freight artery, the canal; it's "heavy rail" replacement, modern rail technology, the minibus revolution and, if John Parry has his way, new flywheel technology.

A veritable Public Transport Experience.

 Next Bus Blog : Tuesday 4th September 

On the Waterfront [1]

A title that brings back memroies of the iconic Marlon Brando film ...

... first screened in 1954! It was far too scary for the youthful fbb to be allowed to go and watch.

Or maybe visions of some Mediterranean holiday Paradise? Or here at Kelowna ...

... British Columbia (Canada).

But BRIERLEY HILL (Birmingham)? Surely not?

This is the annual Festival of Water and Light; and this is Brierley Hill as fbb remembers it!

But the "Waterfornt" is Brierley Hill gone trendy; and, in case you wondered, its on the canal! Now nice Mr Parry ...

... who runs his tiddly yet efficient people mover between Stourbridge Junction and Town stations wants to run a bigger people mover between the Junction and Brierley Hill Waterfront along the presently under-used freight line. The Waterfront is just off the map, top right.

He has got a gang of industrial chums together ...

... to build a bigger unit.

And he has persuaded nice Mr Cameron to give him a bag of shiny pennies towards the development work, although no-one will say how much.

He is planning stations near the Corbett Outpatients Hospital on Vicarage Road ...

... well perhaps not that near (railway far right). Then there will be a stop at the site of the former Brierley Hill station, long since closed.

It was at the junction of Fenton Road and Bradleymore Road and reasonably near the High Street.

His train(s) would then terminate at a new station near the Dudley Road rail bridge ...

... serving the trendy Waterfront, with its golden beaches and rolling breakers (NOT!), which is over to the right a little beyond the warehouses. Mr Parry even shows on is web site how he will contruct his stations from Meccano ...

... and have even bigger People Movers to carry the hordes of passengers off to cosy Bistros and cafes selling halloumi and tofu wraps at astounding prices. In Brierley Hill!

Will it happen? John Parry has harboured his vision of "green" flywheel powered urban transport for well over 20 years. The current operation on the Stourbridge branch is his first real "commercial" success. The move to a longer, bigger line is clearly the next step; but in the current economic climate, fbb wonders where the start-up money might come from. There can't be much left in John's piggy bank, surely?

And, of course, it's not the first high tech train project to wiggle to the Waterfront; or the first dismal failure!

 Next Bus Blog : Monday 3rd September 

L T C Rolt and a Teaching Career

And a touch of Divine Intervention

Tom Rolt (1910 to 1974) effectively created and led the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society; who later named an engine after him.

He was a founder member of the British Waterways Association and thus must be one of the few men ...

... to have a canal bridge named in his honour!

For many years he even lived on a canal longboat.

He was a prolific author on all sorts of Transport related subjects, but, for fbb, his iconic book was "Red for Danger". This chronicled some of the worst railway accidents in the UK, not in a ghoulish way, but in order to show how the railways learned from their mistakes and came to make Britain's line the safest in the world.

fbb (aged a modest 26) had just moved from a small-ish Preparatory School to a "big bad" Comprehensive in Sheffield.

And 4L1 were a real challenge. The "L" stood for "leavers" and these were kiddies who had opted to leave school at 15 and not attempt any qualifications. fbb was allocated these dear children for English in their last term ever of "Education".

It is almost too painful to recall how utterly ineffective the future chubby one was. There was a point at which fbb considered giving up teaching altogether! It was lunchtime and the double lesson was looming. Almost in panic a quick prayer was proffered, something like, "I can't do this God, please help."

On fbb's few allocated inches staffroom shelf was his copy of L T C Rolt's book, this one in fact ...

... and with no idea of how to use it, fbb grabbed it and walked unenthusiastically to his lesson. 4L1 were in their usual riotous mood, and having gained something that passed euphemistically for silence, fbb announce, as dramatically as he could, "Today we are going to look at the worst ever railway accident in the UK."

And he began reading.

With comments, questions and diagrams, some 45 minutes of the double lesson passed in mind-numbing and terrifying silence ...

... and with half and hour to go to the bell a shaky and sweaty teacher wondered what would happen next; when would the storm break?

"Go on, tell us another one, Sir!"

From then on the potentially failed career blossomed. By the end of that term fbb had been appointed Head of the RE Department and remained thus for a further 13 years becoming one of the longest "stayers" in the school.

Thank you God and Thank you Tom Rolt.

Oh, he was keen on classic cars as well.

But Tom will be mostly remembered for his single handed "invention" of the Railway Preservation movement. He died in 1974 and you have to wonder how he would have reacted to today's plethora of preserved lines now offering their multifarious delights to an ever eager public.

Here he is at his happiest time, seeing of a Talyllyn Railway train from Abergynolwyn in 1951, the first year of "preserved" operation.

By the time this blog is published, fbb and Mrs fbb will be have been back home from their holidays for a week or so, but with very happy memories of being aroused from a post prandial snooze by the toot of the engine as it changed ends at Nant Gwernol Station ...

... just a few hundred yards from their temporary back door.

P.S. fat bus bloke's Bible blog launches today (here).

 Next Bus Blog : Sunday 2nd September